


Antithesis

by Ayamatsu



Category: Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 | Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World (Anime)
Genre: Pride V/S Envy fic.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:42:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29804484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayamatsu/pseuds/Ayamatsu
Summary: "Antithesis - A contrast or opposition between two people or a thing."It all starts with Subaru Natsuki seeing something. Something which should never have been seen.  Something which should never have been brought to this world.Facing the consequence of his past sin, it's a matter of time before everything he stood for burns to ashes.(Basically a Pride V/S Envy fic)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	Antithesis

**Author's Note:**

> Why am I writing another fic when I'm not even done with the other two?  
> Good question.  
> But more importantly, I'll prepare a schedule and will write one chapter for each fic every week! So that's good. I'll be diligent! I'll never indulge in sloth!
> 
> Also this was too good an idea to pass, I'm looking forward to your thoughts on it!  
> 🗿👌👌👌

_'Behold an unthinkable present'_

Were the words the black-haired youth had heard when he lost his consciousness. Now that he thinks back on it, he'd rather not have heard them.

For they were words that caused him pain to no end. They were words that made him sick to his core. Those words had shown him something that he didn't want to see.

These words had manifested something — no — someone that did not care about others, did not care how many lives he took, to him all that mattered was her becoming queen. 

Yes, what the youth saw was himself. He saw himself committing those murders— those atrocities. He killed and killed and killed but he was not satisfied, for his beloved had not become queen yet. So he killed some more.

__________________________________

"Uu.." the youth sighed as a single question floated around his mind 'How did he get here?' Well that was simple, he'd ran, seeking her, he had hoped that her calming presence would help her but it didn't go as he wanted it to. Instead he was thrown into a void where he couldn't move his limbs… or anything to be honest. The only thing that existed in that void was his consciousness until he heard a voice, a voice that screamed in terror as it felt it's stomach tear, exposing it's guts to the entire world, "aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH!"

"Ah~," a female voice— a voice that the youth abhorred— moaned, "you're guts are so pretty," she pushed her Kukri under his intestines, picking them up with it. "They are so warm and so detailed." 

"I… ear… I'll… ill… you." The voice had grown quite weak when compared to the screams of terror it had let out a while ago, yet it had a certain degree of hate imbued into it.

"I certainly have to commend that determination of yours, even though you're dying, you want to kill me. The hate radiating off of you, it's just… beautiful." She smiled as her gaze darkened, "I'll remember your name… Subaru Natsuki, was it?" 

It was at this moment, the youth called Subaru Natsuki lost his life. 

But yet he was here, facing the appa merchant, who held up a red fruit upto his face. The fruit looked quite similar to an apple and Subaru couldn't help but compare the fruit with the merchant's face, who had a huge scar running down his forehead.

"Do you want the appa, kid?" The merchant said in a tone that seemed like he was repeating the same sentence again.

Subaru stared at the man for a second before sighing and walking away as the merchant popped his head out of his stand and looked on as Subaru disappeared into the back alleys. 

'That loop was a no-go as well.' His hands reached down and grabbed a stick with a sharp tip. But the way he reached out to it was… unnatural to say the least. He never looked down or tried to search around for it. His eyes were focused on the other end of the back alley as he picked it up. It was almost as if… he knew where it was.

"Ah, who cares anymore… it's not like it matters anyway, I'll have many more retries either way." He picked up the stick as his eyebrows furrowed, making his scary-looking eyes look even scarier.

The reason for his anger— or rather annoyance were three men of varying heights. The ugliness in their hearts manifested on their faces.

As soon as Subaru stood up, the guy in the middle said, "cough up everything you got or el—" 

The reason his sentence was cut short was quite simple, the man had been kicked in the guts by Subaru who quickly grabbed the guy standing beside him and smashed his small frame into the wall, he then proceeded to stab the stick into the huge man's neck, who was frozen in shock.

"You're difficult as always, huh big guy?" Subaru asked the corpse, and being a corpse, it didn't answer. "Well," he raised his legs and put it on the man's neck, "no hard feelings, just want to— maybe a little bit, but I still want to make sure you're dead." 

He brought his leg down on his neck and raised it again and brought it down again, repeating the step over and over again until he heard the neck bone crack under his feet, "Still makes me sick to my stomach but I'm pretty sure I'm doing this for the greater good," he walked towards the man who he had knocked unconscious, "after all," as soon as he felt the neck crack, he moved on to the small guy and raised his leg quite high, "nobody wants you guys here." He stomped on his neck with every bit of strength in his body, cracking it in an instant.

__________________________________

"....." Subaru didn't know what to say or how to react, was this really him? That wasn't how it went. He hadn't killed anyone. He couldn't kill anyone, that wasn't who he was, that was definitely not him. But then the question arises: Who is that? They had the same orange, sanpaku eyes that gave them an evil look. They had the same black hair that was styled like raindrops near the forehead.  
They had the same ability, the same foe, the same jersey. Everything was similar between them… except for one thing, their personalities.

Don't be confused, their personalities were almost the same yet at the same time, quite different. The murderer had a sadistic smile on his face as he killed them. He didn't have a look of remorse or regret when he did that. He nonchalantly killed them and disposed of their body almost as if… he had done this a 100 times by now.

You see, Subaru knew this was not real, because he was still here, in the sanctuary and this… this video that was playing in front of him never happened. But Subaru couldn't shake off this feeling of despair that filled the nooks and crannies of his heart.

__________________________________

"Ah, honestly! Why is she so strong!?" Subaru complained nonchalantly from the roof of a building. He was looking down on a battle— rather, a one-sided massacre between people that were dressed like knights and a single woman that cut through their metal armour with her Kukri. You know, an armour is quite useless when you're fighting someone like that woman, she was the very definition of a monster, her arm strength was on point as she drove her Kukri across the armour, cutting through the armour like it was butter, but as soon as she had done that, a small trickle of blood— that turned into a full-on fountain— sputtered out of the single gash on the armour.

Her habit of cutting open the bowels of her victims had earned her an appropriate nickname known as the ' **Guthunter** '. Subaru deemed that name… unsettling. 

He sighed as he got up, "Looks like this loop will be a no-go as well, time to end this loo—" his sentence came to an abrupt stop when he noticed a red-haired young man make his way to her, a gallant expression on his face and the overwhelming aura that surrounded him.

"Go no further—" he said.

A voice that was kind yet at the same time, stern. 

_A pillar of fire_ , that's what Subaru compares the young man to.

"Everyone, fall back, this woman is the Guthunter, the number of sacrifices are far too many." The young man speaks in a stern tone as he turns to the woman, his eyes filled with nothing but a sense of duty and justice.

Subaru, even though he's watching from afar, can discern this young man's nature,  
He was justice itself.

"Excellent! Absolutely excellent! If it isn't the Sword Saint, Reinhardt Van Astrea!" The Guthunter looked unnaturally happy to see the young man, making Subaru think he must be someone important.

"And you… you must be the Guthunter, if I'm not wrong?" The man called Reinhardt asks.

"Ahhh, what should I do? I'm supposed to be working but you're here." A voice that had a tinge of cheerfulness to it spoke.

"Fundamentally speaking, this is where I ask you to surrender but…" 

"That'd be too kind of you, so kind that it's cruel to both them and me." 

"I agree, it'd be cruel of me if I'm lenient to you." He turned to the guard that was standing beside him and asked for a sword.

Him doing so seemed to annoy the Guthunter as she puffed out her cheeks and said, "You're not going to use the sword at your hip?" 

"Ah, you see, the Dragonblade has a troublesome trait, it decides on who it ought to be drawn for." 

"Hmpf, fine." She leans forward as she readies her Kukri, feelings of bloodshed run rampant in her mind as she smiles, " **Elsa Granhiert, Guthunter.** " 

" **Reinhardt Van Astrea of the Sword Saint bloodline**." 

They became wind itself as they clashed, but their clash was over in an instant, since the man called Reinhardt Van Astrea was what someone could call 'The closest being to God' and Elsa could never match up to someone like him.

_________________________________

"What was that!?" Subaru brought his hand down on the table, making a loud 'thud' as he asked angrily. "That never happened! At all! Why would you show me something like that!?"

The lady stared at him, her eyes wide in confusion. She batted her eyelashes a few times before sighing and, "Calm down, I'll tell you everything I know." 

Her porcelain white skin shone in the sun as her white hair swayed in the wind, her alluring yet… strange smile gave her face a rather beautiful glow. And in contrast to her porcelain white skin, her black eyes were like endless pits of curiosity. 

"Yeah, you better do that, Echidna!" 

The woman called Echidna smiled and pointed to the chair that was sitting empty in front of her, "Please take a seat."

Subaru obliged and sat down as she offered him a cup of tea that Subaru stared at with disgust on his face, he proceeded to ignore her gesture of kindness and, "So? What was that?" 

"You're not going to drink the tea?" 

"I'm not drinking your bodily fluids! Moreover stop trying to dodge the question!" 

"Haha~ I'm sorry," her laugh was quite unpleasant to hear, "well getting down to what you saw…"

"Yeah, what was that?" 

"It might be real." 

"Huh!? What the— what do you mean that's real!? That was… I could never commit those murders! I— I don't have the power or the courage to do that." 

"I never said it was real, I said 'it might be real'. Moreover, the chance of that happening is quite high. If you hadn't swallowed your pride back then and yelled for the knights or if the Sword Saint had never shown up, what do you think would've happened?" Echidna rested her chin on her hands, leaning on the table, she looked at Subaru with great interest in her eyes.

"'What could've happened?'" Subaru repeated her question as he tried to think of what could have happened. It was strange to be honest, he hadn't really thought about what could've happened back then, because he knew he had no way to defeat those thugs and if he tried to fight them, he knew he would end up dead, and the fact that he didn't want to die got the better of him, so he swallowed his pride and called for the Knights, but what if he hadn't swallowed his pride? What if he couldn't let go of his pride? Would he have died over and over again, trying to find a way to defeat Elsa? Now that Subaru thinks about it, he remembered the other Subaru had made tally marks on the soil before walking into the deserted back alleys, and if he remembered correctly, the number of marks he had made was… 88. He made those marks every time he Returned by Death and each time the number grew. 

Subaru's placid expression turned into an expression of fear in an instant, his face scrunched up as his eyes widened and in contrast to that, his pupils contracted. His jaw dropped as his lips started to tremble.

'88 times!? I— that's impossible, I can't do that, I'm not strong enough to die 88 times! That can't happen, can'tcan'tcan'tcan't happen! I could never—' 

A single thought crossed his mind then, a thought that Subaru felt, was impossible. 'What if he had?' what if he had died over and over again? He would've gone insane if he had died 88+ times, and what Subaru saw in that trial was definitely enjoying the murders he was committing. He didn't show remorse or even regret when he killed Tonchinkan nor did he care when he sacrificed Felt and Rom as he escaped from Elsa. "That was what could've happened—" 

"Yes. You saw what would've happened if you had chosen the 'Path of Pride'." Echidna knew it was about time, 'Just one more—' she told herself as her lips parted, "You'll be faced with similar choices, and if you give in to the path of sin, things will go bad, so…" she stretched her hands towards him as her smirk grew bigger and her gaze, darker.

__________________________________

Subaru denied her offer, he denied Echidna's offer. Thanks to the witches, he came to know what would happen if he had taken her contract, he was happy that didn't happen. And now, he had saved Beatrice from that hellish contract, Garfiel had taken down Elsa and he had set fire to the mansion to make sure she died, but… why does he feel so uncomfortable? Hasn't he run halfway through the finish line? Then why does he feel that something big is going to happen? Something big other than the Great Rabbits. Why does he feel that a threat is coming their way? Why does he feel like—

__________________________________

_Crack_

The sound of cracking engulfs the snow-filled land as splatters of red cover it. The bodies of hooded men adorn the land as a single young man, a dark smile on his face, thrusts the sword into the skull of a rather odd-looking man.

The man had green hair and small, black pupils, the contours of his cheekbones stuck out quite unnaturally, his pale green skin was covered in scars. He coughs out blood as a single question escapes his mouth, "why?" 

"Ah, you know, Bete-san, I thought we could've been friends but since you wanted to kill her, I can't let that happen, you see. After all," the youth smiled — at the feelings of love — as he said, "I love her." 

"NATSUKKKKKKKI SUBBBBBBBARU!!!" At his confession of love to the silver-haired half-elf, the man called Bete-san yells as the last dregs of blood leave his body, thus killing him.

Subaru Natsuki sighs, a sigh that he has been holding in ever since he had joined the witch cult, "dealing with a madman is really difficult, hu—" A sudden pain shoots up his body as he feels something caress his heart, it felt like— the unseen hand! Subaru looks down at the now dead 'Bete-san'.

"It's not him—" 

"Oh, you're done on this side too, mister?" That sound he had just heard, he knew them, but their voices were becoming distorted, his senses were starting to dim, his vision was starting to blur, the smell of blood and snow that he had smelt a minute ago was nowhere, the sounds— Subaru couldn't hear anything, everything felt… empty, what was happening? Whatwhatwhat was happening? Was he dying? Did Bete-san do something to him? "No, that's not it—" Subaru knew death, he had felt it numerous times, it always left him feeling cold, but this time was not like that, instead of feeling cold, he was feeling warm— rather, it felt like he was being cooked alive.

That's when Subaru Natsuki opened his eyes.  
Opening them to something he didn't expect to see.


End file.
